Over the past few decades, there have been significant advances in computer networking technology. Simultaneously, the field of consumer electronics (CE) has been rapidly developing, especially in the area of digitalization of electronic devices. New technologies are emerging that can make consumer electronic devices compatible with computing devices, such as a personal computer (PC). For example, the IEEE 802.11 standard can allow for wireless connectivity between various CE devices and the PCs in a network.
As a result of the above-mentioned advancements, a concept of home networking has emerged where consumers can connect the computing devices and the electronic devices in their homes. A home network is a network connecting various devices in the home environment. The home network may connect devices such as a computer, a printer, a scanner etc, as well as various consumer electronic devices such as a set top box, a Television (TV), a Personal Video Recorder (PVR), an audio jukebox, game consoles and others. The connection enables these devices to communicate and share information with each other. For example, an Internet connection, printers, or other peripherals can be shared with any device in the network, digital audio and video can be played from a PC to a stereo or television and home automation systems can be controlled through a PC. A home network can also enable sharing of storage space associated with various computing and electronic devices in the home network. This can typically allow, amongst other uses, an MP3 file to be stored either on the storage space in an MP3 jukebox, or on the storage space in a PC.
An important issue for home networks is the management of such storage space that is distributed on various devices that have disparate properties. Interconnection of these heterogeneous devices creates a complex home network that has the capacity to store various types of data and offer new ways of exchanging data. As a consequence, users are faced with a management problem in maintaining their data across a variety of storage devices distributed across the home network. This problem typically occurs when a user has for example, a collection of audio files that is too large to store entirely on a single storage device. The collection must therefore be distributed over several distinct devices, such as a PC, a jukebox and an MP3 player. The user is confronted with a problem of maintaining the collection across the distributed storage devices. This problem is compounded when storing large collections of digital items such as pictures, music and video.
The problem of managing storage space across a variety of storage devices also subsists with enterprise networks. Enterprises usually adopt a combination of storage management solutions depending on the type of their storage requirements. Some of the common storage management solutions include Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID), Server Attached Storage (SAS), Network-Attached Storage (NAS), Storage Area Network (SAN), and Hierarchical Storage Management (HSM) systems. These are briefly discussed below.
RAID is a method of creating one or more pools of data storage space from several hard drives. RAID combines multiple hard drives in a system, thus ensuring availability of data even if one (or more) hard drives fail. Other benefits of RAID are fast access and data transfer speed. Additionally, with RAID in place, the operating system no longer deals with individual drives, but instead with the entire disk array as one logical drive.
SAS is a storage solution in which disks or disk storage units are directly attached to a file server using, for example, one-to-one Small Computer System Interface (SCSI) attachments. In order for clients on a network to use the storage units, the client devices must have access to the server to which the storage units are connected.
NAS refers to self-contained disk storage systems that can be coupled directly to a network using an Ethernet cable in the same manner that a workstation is connected. These storage systems are self-contained since they operate independently of any server and provide one or more disks packaged in a standalone enclosure.
SAN is a dedicated network that allows a few servers to share many high-speed storage systems. SAN allows a large storage system to be logically partitioned, with each partition attached to a server. Further, SAN allows for sharing of storage equipment, such as tape drives, by multiple hosts.
HSM systems automatically manage enterprise data across a variety of storage devices, which may consist of high performance disks, RAID systems, optical storage, tape libraries and others. For example, if an aging file falls into disuse, it can be automatically moved to a slower and less expensive form of archival storage.
The above-referred storage management solutions employed by enterprise networks have one or more of the following shortcomings. These shortcomings render the enterprise storage solutions unsuitable for automatically managing distributed storage space within home networks. Firstly, enterprise storage solutions require expert management by system administrators. Users of home networks may not have the expertise or the desire to manage their collections across heterogeneous storage devices. Secondly, if a new item is added to any device in a network, the issue of automatically selecting an appropriate storage space for the new item is not addressed by any system. Most of the enterprise storage solutions are only concerned with the transfer of items between primary and secondary servers or the provision of data redundancy. Finally, most of the existing storage management solutions require centralized controllers.